• Once your data is online - its online (forever)

    Updated: 2010-09-30 15:12:00
    , , , : Shaun Mccran My digital playground Home About Me Portfolio Projects Gallery Xbox 360 Contact 30 S E P 2010 Once your data is online its online forever Posted By Shaun Related Categories : Social General Interest Two recent news stories have brought to light the dangers of what data people are happy to put online , without really considering the wider implications . The both stories have different antagonists , and both highlight the very real world dangers of storing data online , whether its on a social platform like Facebook , or a more traditionally unseen platform like a database . The moral of both stories is clear : Once something is online' , it is online , and there is no taking it back . Users posting to Social Networking Platforms The first story concerns a woman claiming

  • Friday Scala Kata: Conway’s Game Of Life

    Updated: 2010-09-30 04:48:26
    It’s time to bring back the old Friday Scala Kata and practice a new favorite, Conway’s Game of Life. Given a grid of cells, the following rules apply: Any cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if caused by underpopulation. Any cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding. Any alive cell [...]

  • Geocoding IP Addresses For Free Using IPInfoDB And ColdFusion

    Updated: 2010-09-30 01:40:00
    Geocoding is the act of getting unknown geographic information based on existing related geographic information. So, for example, when we use Google Maps, we are often geocoding addresses; that is, we are getting latitude and longitude values based on street address (ex. 123 Main St.). While not nearly as accurate as street addresses, IP addresses are also a form of geographic information. Using services like IPInfoDB, we can geocode IP address in ColdFusion; that is, we can get the general g ... ead More raquo;

  • DotNetNuke Tips and Tricks #21: Conditional Styles

    Updated: 2010-09-28 17:37:54
    : The Accidental Geek One Geek's Journey Search Sign in Home Subscribe Getting Back in the Workshop DotNetNuke Tips and Tricks 21 : Conditional Styles Sep 28 One of the issues that every DotNetNuke skin designer faces is how to design skins for multiple browsers . 160 Often , getting a skin to work in Firefox , Chrome , Safari and Opera is pretty straightforward and doesn’t require much tweaking . 160 Unfortunately , the same cannot be said of Internet Explorer . 160 Making your skin work with IE6, 7 and 8 along with all the other browsers can be a bit of a . nightmare I previously addressed this issue in DotNetNuke Tips and Tricks 3 : Conditional StyleSheets In that post , I created a skin object that allows you to conditionally add a stylesheet to the skin based on a condition defined by

  • DotNetNuke Skinning 101 (Part 5)

    Updated: 2010-09-27 18:59:09
    The Accidental Geek One Geek's Journey Search Sign in Home Subscribe DotNetNuke Tips and Tricks 21 : Conditional Styles DotNetNuke Skinning 101 Part 5 Sep 27 I have often heard it said that people have difficulty creating skins for DotNetNuke I am always baffled when I hear these comments especially in light of what I see in the competing skinning engines on other platforms . 160 In this series of posts I’ll be looking at the basics of DotNetNuke Skinning , creating a complete DotNetNuke skin and associated containers , dispelling a few Myths and Misconceptions about DotNetNuke Skinning and finally we’ll wrap up the series by comparing the DotNetNuke skinning engine with those of some other web . platforms Part 1 : Understanding the Basics Part 2 : Building a Skin Part 3 : Building

  • Communicating With The Client Whilst Inside A ColdFusion Custom Tag

    Updated: 2010-09-27 17:12:00
    Last week, I was having a conversation with Matt about the way in which ColdFusion prevents any content from being flushed to the browser during the execution of a ColdFusion custom tag. Matt wanted to be able to report updates to the client during the creation of an Excel document being generated with my POI cu ... ead More raquo;

  • DotNetNuke Tips and Tricks #20: Module Action Menu Links

    Updated: 2010-09-27 06:04:15
    : The Accidental Geek One Geek's Journey Search Sign in Home Subscribe DotNetNuke Skinning 101 Part 5 DotNetNuke Tips and Tricks 20 : Module Action Menu Links Sep 26 Very early in the life of DotNetNuke modules were fairly limited in their functionality . 160 Modules could have multiple behaviors attached to them by the framework which were displayed as a list of link buttons . 160 Very quickly this UI became very cumbersome as we continued to add more and more behaviors to the standard list of behaviors . This UI greatly limited the amount of actions that could be attached to a module and at the time the list of behaviors was fairly static . 160 One of the first enhancements that I worked on for my own modules was the ability to create a menu that was attached to the module . 160 This

  • DropNode Github Repo Now Public

    Updated: 2010-09-26 21:52:42
    Recently someone posted on my previous entry about my team’s Node Knockout entry DropNode that they’d love to see the source for it. I didn’t know that it wasn’t publicly available and I’ve now fixed that. I haven’t done anything with it since then but plan to someday revisit it. I think the HTMl5 [...]

  • JQuery AJAX Http polling example

    Updated: 2010-09-26 19:05:00
    , , , : Shaun Mccran My digital playground Home About Me Portfolio Projects Gallery Xbox 360 Contact 26 S E P 2010 JQuery AJAX Http polling example Posted By Shaun Related Categories : AJAX JQuery Coldfusion Json I've been using the JQuery post( and get( functions for a while now , and thanks to decent Blog entries from other community members I've got my head around the principles of seamless AJAX http requests and response handling . This article examines a way of creating a polling AJAX http request . This is a request that will run every N seconds based on a value . It will hit a remote service and return a result , and display that result on screen . View a full demo of an AJAX polling request . here The remote service CFC The remote service I am using in this example is a Coldfusion

  • Paynode: More Payflow API methods + Braintree Integration

    Updated: 2010-09-26 15:36:14
    This morning I took some time out to do a few chores on my pet node.js project, paynode. In case you missed it, this has been my attempt to fill a void in node.js land for payment gateway integration. Think ActiveMerchant for node.js. Today I’ve made a few updates to it. In an effort [...]

  • Lessons Learned With My Recent Node.js App

    Updated: 2010-09-26 05:37:02
    Recently I created a little web app for a friend’s conference to accept talk submissions and gather votes on those submissions to rank the top ones. For this task I used heroku’s node.js beta preview to host the application and a free couchone instance for the data store. Things were a bit rocky but I [...]

  • DotNetNuke 5.5.1 Released

    Updated: 2010-09-22 18:37:35
    The Accidental Geek One Geek's Journey Search Sign in Home Subscribe DotNetNuke Tips and Tricks 20 : Module Action Menu Links DotNetNuke 5.5.1 Released Sep 22 I am happy to announce the release of DotNetNuke 5.5.1.  This release includes many bug fixes for the most critical issues identified in DotNetNuke 5.5.0 which we released last month . 160 As a result of the recent ASP.Net Padding Oracle Vulnerability , which was discussed by Shaun Walker and Cathal Connolly in their recent blogs , we have added additional checks and upgrade enhancements in this release to ensure that DotNetNuke sites running the latest version are using the recommended CustomErrors configuration . 160 As we have noted in many of our recent releases , we continue to increase our Quality Assurance efforts with each

  • Proof Of Concept: Adding Pusher-Powered Update Support To jQuery AJAX

    Updated: 2010-09-22 17:12:00
    The other day, I was performing an AJAX request that executed a number of laborious tasks on the server. As I was doing this, I thought it would create a very nice user experience if I could provide some sort of piece-wise feedback in the user interface. Unfortunately, there's no elegant way to provide step-updates using jQuery's core ajax() method. You can play around with long- ... ead More raquo;

  • Simple JQuery method of intercepting a hyperlink

    Updated: 2010-09-21 16:49:00
    , , , : Shaun Mccran My digital playground Home About Me Portfolio Projects Gallery Xbox 360 Contact 21 S E P 2010 Simple JQuery method of intercepting a hyperlink Posted By Shaun Related Categories : JQuery Javascript Ever wanted to run a custom routine like validation on a template when a user clicks a link to proceed to the next step I recently worked on a checkout template that was not a form , but still needed some validation installed when a user clicked the proceed' option . The code below shows a very simple way of using a JQuery selector to intercept the href click event and replace it with a custom function . My example shows a warning' div , and then returns false , IE does not action the click URL request . print about ColdFISH is developed by Jason Delmore . Source code and

  • Streaming media to Xbox 360's and PS3's using Twonky Media Suite

    Updated: 2010-09-20 22:17:00
    , , , : Shaun Mccran My digital playground Home About Me Portfolio Projects Gallery Xbox 360 Contact 20 S E P 2010 Streaming media to Xbox 360's and PS3's using Twonky Media Suite Posted By Shaun Related Categories : Gadgets XBox360 Recommended Apps I run a windows server 2003 pc at home , server 2003 is a great little web server that can handle multiple roles , including file storage . Unfortunately it is not Upnp universal Plug and Play so will not stream media directly to media players like Xbox 360 consoles , and the Playstation 3. The traditional and recommended solution to this is to stream the media through another more modern operating system that has upnp dnla connections that reside in Windows Media player . This can restrict where you store files on a network , I for one do not

  • DotNetNuke Tips and Tricks #19: Leveraging XML Merge Scripts

    Updated: 2010-09-15 11:58:44
    : The Accidental Geek One Geek's Journey Search Sign in Home Subscribe DotNetNuke 5.5.1 Released DotNetNuke Tips and Tricks 19 : Leveraging XML Merge Scripts Sep 15 As long-time DotNetNuke users well know , DotNetNuke contains an extensive API that makes the platform extremely powerful and flexible . 160 Over time the core APIs have continued to expand as new features were added and existing features were enhanced . 160 One of the core APIs which has been part of DotNetNuke since 4.6 was released three years ago today is the XML Merge . API The XML Merge API was developed to enable developers to define changes that need to occur to any xml based file within the website . 160 It is primarily used by the core framework to make updates to web.config but has utility beyond just updating

  • links for 2010-09-14

    Updated: 2010-09-14 14:02:56
    Game mechanics for non-profits

  • Cookies in ColdFusion - cfcookie or cfset?

    Updated: 2010-09-14 11:02:00
    , , , : Shaun Mccran My digital playground Home About Me Portfolio Projects Gallery Xbox 360 Contact 14 S E P 2010 Cookies in ColdFusion cfcookie or cfset Posted By Shaun Related Categories : Structs Coldfusion Cookies are a platform independent scope , by this I mean that even though we can create and manipulate them in ColdFusion , they are not inherently ColdFusion technology . Cookies are ideal if you want to access data at a browser level , in ANY technology , cfml , asp , javascript etc and they are also a good way to store non critical data on a users browser . They basically work by sending their data to the browser instance , to be used as temporary storage . ColdFusion can create , edit and delete cookies quite easily , but what are the functional differences in how you create

  • Using Self-Executing Function Arguments To Override Core jQuery Methods

    Updated: 2010-09-13 16:07:00
    Overriding jQuery methods (or any function for that matter) is a relatively straight forward process . All you have to do is get a reference to the old method (if you need to keep it) and then override the object key (method name) using your new function. A while back, however, I was reading Eric Hynds' blog ... ead More raquo;

  • Overloading Javascript Functions Using A Sub-Function Approach

    Updated: 2010-09-10 00:06:00
    I've been looking through a lot of jQuery source code lately and one of the things that I see being done all over the place is function overloading. Function overloading is the practice in which a function can take different sets of arguments. In a strict language like Java, overloaded functions are typically defined with physically different method signatures; in looser languages like ColdFusion and Javascript - where you can't define parallel variables with the same name - function overload ... ead More raquo;

  • Using jQuery's animate() Method To Power Easing-Based Iteration

    Updated: 2010-09-09 16:08:00
    Last night, I was reading about jQuery animation when I had the thought that you could use the animate() method to power iteration in which the iteration-step was implemented with an easing function rather than with a liner incrementation. A while back, I demonstrated that the step callback of the animate() method could be used to create complex, custom ani ... ead More raquo;

  • Finding text within specific types of files from the command line

    Updated: 2010-09-09 14:32:47
    Be nice to geeks in school , you might end up working for one . Geekology About Facebook Page Software Posts coding applescript bash scripting css html javascript objective-c php python databases mysql sqlite entertainment boardgames books humor series videogames news documentaries podcasts the geeks productivity tips tricks unix apple linux tools asterisk cpanel subversion whm videos web dev apache seo Finding text within specific types of files from the command line 09 Sep 2010 0 Comments Sometimes it’s useful to speed up text or regular expression based searches from the command line by only searching through specific types of . files To find text within specifically-typed files from the command line , open a new Terminal window , switch to the directory containing the files you want to

  • Executing AppleScript commands from the command line

    Updated: 2010-09-09 11:28:43
    Mac users swear by their Mac , PC users swear at their PC . Geekology About Facebook Page Software Posts coding applescript bash scripting css html javascript objective-c php python databases mysql sqlite entertainment boardgames books humor series videogames news documentaries podcasts the geeks productivity tips tricks unix apple linux tools asterisk cpanel subversion whm videos web dev apache seo Executing AppleScript commands from the command line 09 Sep 2010 0 Comments If you work on a Mac you can use AppleScript to automate many of your applications as well as the built-in OS X . functionality Any AppleScript command can be run from the Terminal by using the osascript utility one such command that I’ve found useful is to launch the Mac OS X . Screensaver To execute an AppleScript

  • Counting files and lines of code in a directory from the command line

    Updated: 2010-09-09 01:12:17
    1 1 3 for very large values of 1' Geekology About Facebook Page Software Posts coding applescript bash scripting css html javascript objective-c php python databases mysql sqlite entertainment boardgames books humor series videogames news documentaries podcasts the geeks productivity tips tricks unix apple linux tools asterisk cpanel subversion whm videos web dev apache seo Counting files and lines of code in a directory from the command line 09 Sep 2010 0 Comments At times it’s useful to know how many lines of code your software projects consist of , even if just for bragging rights about the scale of the work you’re . doing To count the files and lines of code text in a directory from the command line , open a new Terminal window , switch to the directory that contains your source code ,

  • DotNetNuke Tips and Tricks #18: Just to Summarize

    Updated: 2010-09-08 16:43:58
    : The Accidental Geek One Geek's Journey Search Sign in Home Subscribe Getting Started with DotNetNuke DotNetNuke Tips and Tricks 18 : Just to Summarize Sep 08 This article is cross-posted from my company blog Do you use Windows Live Writer and the DotNetNuke Blog module I do , and I just discovered a great new WLW feature which is going to greatly simplify the steps I have to perform for every blog . post I have been using Windows Live Writer WLW for a few years now . 160 I really love WLW for writing my blog . 160 In fact I loved it so much that it was one of the reasons I had shifted my personal blog to BlogEngine.net At the time , the DotNetNuke Blog module did not support a posting API which could be used with WLW . 160 You don’t know real pain until you have tried to write a blog

  • What ColdFusion Teaches Us About The Ultimate "Roll Your Own" Solution

    Updated: 2010-09-08 16:14:00
    A while back, Rebecca Murphey started posting some interesting thoughts about what enterprise Javascript applications are and how they should be structured. One of her posts that really got me thinking was one titled, " On Rolling Your Own ". In that particular post (with reference to a few others), Rebecca questions the logistics of rolling your own appl ... ead More raquo;

  • Jquery Rounded Corners Plugin Example - cross browser CSS replacement

    Updated: 2010-09-08 15:50:00
    , , , : Shaun Mccran My digital playground Home About Me Portfolio Projects Gallery Xbox 360 Contact 08 S E P 2010 Jquery Rounded Corners Plugin Example cross browser CSS replacement Posted By Shaun Related Categories : CSS JQuery Javascript A while ago I wrote an article on how to implement CSS3 and Cross browser rounded corner CSS . That article http : www.mccran.co.uk index.cfm 2010 7 8 CSS-3-Rounded-Corners-Example mentions that the CSS3 code has not been adopted as a standard by some browsers IE I'm looking at you but that there are some work around's to it , most of which involve re writing DOM elements using JavaScript . This article deals with a JQuery plugin that can emulate a totally cross browser CSS3 rounded corners solution . There is an example of the finished code here :

  • Forcing an SSL redirect using Coldfusion

    Updated: 2010-09-07 14:36:00
    , , , : Shaun Mccran My digital playground Home About Me Portfolio Projects Gallery Xbox 360 Contact 07 S E P 2010 Forcing an SSL redirect using Coldfusion Posted By Shaun Related Categories : Security Coldfusion I've never really coded much around individual Secure templates , but this afternoon I found myself working in a framework where certain templates were required to be called with the https' URL instead of standard non secure . URLs This turns out to be incredibly easy . There is a variable in the cgi scope that tells you if the request is served under a secure port or not , cgi.server_port_secure returns true or false 1 0 so you can use it to redirect people to where they should . be print about ColdFISH is developed by Jason Delmore . Source code and license information available

  • Bundling Node.js Dependencies For Deployment on Heroku

    Updated: 2010-09-05 23:28:05
    Thought I’d throw this out there for those who are new to node.js or just in general new to deploying apps to heroku, but here’s how to bundle dependencies via npm for deployment to heroku (or even for any kind of redistribution in general). Given that you have defined the dependencies of your project in [...]

  • Twitters OAuth changes break HTC Peeps login

    Updated: 2010-09-04 00:13:00
    , , , : Shaun Mccran My digital playground Home About Me Portfolio Projects Gallery Xbox 360 Contact 04 S E P 2010 Twitters OAuth changes break HTC Peeps login Posted By Shaun Related Categories : Mobile Android Applications HTC I've got a HTC Desire Android handset and I use the Twitter Application that ships with it , Peep . Recently it stopped logging in for me , after a quick search around online it looks like Twitter have finally made their OAuth login authentication mandatory for third party applications . This is a good thing in itself , but it does raise the question of when a platform changes from being just open' to being so wide spread that it is considered as a public API . I'm not in a position to comment on why Peep wasn't updated to work with OAuth before it was released ,

  • Appcelerator and DotNetNuke are Hacktaculous

    Updated: 2010-09-02 19:10:47
    The Accidental Geek One Geek's Journey Search Sign in Home Subscribe DotNetNuke Skinning 101 Part 4 Appcelerator and DotNetNuke are Hacktaculous Sep 02 This article is cross-posted from my DotNetNuke blog On August 18th we kicked off the Mobile DotNetNuke Hackathon at the St . Louis DotNetNuke User Group During the kick-off we had a great demonstration of Appcelerator Titanium from Kevin Whinnery Kevin is an Appcelerator Engineer and Product Evangelist and it was clear from his presentation that he was both passionate and knowledgeable about Titanium . 160 Almost everyone we spoke with was extremely interested in giving Titanium a try and the Hackathon was the perfect opportunity to kick the tires and build a great mobile . application If you have been following the voting this last week

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